


Movie Night

by Sholio



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, Gen, Loneliness, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2763638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve doesn't like most 21st-century cinema. For h/c bingo wildcard space - "culture shock".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movie Night

If Steve Rogers, all-American hero, has a deep dark secret -- besides the _real_ ones, the ones he skirts around like a black hole in his brain -- then maybe it's this: Steve doesn't like most 21st-century cinema, and can't really stand the television at all. 

He's learned not to mention this around his friends, even Sam, because in this place and time, watching films or television shows in someone's living room is one of the main ways people their age socialize. And mentioning that he didn't enjoy whatever movie they just watched usually invites well-intentioned questions of what movie he'd rather watch, and the only ones he can come up with are movies from his youth, because he hasn't really enjoyed much of anything they've shown him from the last few decades. Movies these days are too frenetic and loud, too violent and profane; they're so slick and commercialized that he can't empathize with anything in them, or so brutally cynical that they scrape against the raw edges of things he tries not to think about. Sometimes the problem is just that movies and TV shows are full of jokes everyone around him laughs at while he smiles politely. 

The funny movies are, in some ways, the worst. It's not even a matter of missing cultural references, for the most part. He gets why the jokes are supposed to be funny. They just aren't. The 21st-century sense of humor is different from the 1930s sense of humor, and while it doesn't seem to be too much of an issue in conversation, at least not around people he's comfortable with, the difference is sharply apparent in popular entertainment. He used to _love_ funny movies and radio shows and comic pages. He and Bucky would act out their favorite Laurel  & Hardy or Amos & Andy routines on the broken-down old couch in Bucky's folks' apartment, falling over themselves laughing. And he gets why a lot of that stuff isn't funny anymore, probably never should have been; he gets why different things are funny now. But it's not enough just to _know_. He doesn't react to it on a basic level, like people do when they were born fifty years and a whole cultural world later.

Netflix, it turns out, has some of the movies he used to like -- westerns and monster movies and Marx Brothers. Nobody minds Steve picking the movie, but his friends suffer through them without any more enthusiasm than Steve manages to muster for _Ghostbusters_ or _Inception._ He can understand, because these movies feel kinda flat to him now, too, a thin shadow of reality in overexposed black and white. It wasn't just the movies. It was the smell of hot celluloid and stale popcorn; it was him and Bucky each paying their quarter to see a picture and then sneaking into shows they hadn't paid for, because the theatre was one of the only places to cool off in July. 

But, on the other hand, nobody cares if he doesn't watch the film so much as hang out with his sketchbook, drawing his friends while they crack up over jokes that barely make sense, or watch splashy fictional explosions that make him flinch. Half the time he gets the feeling that they're playing along too, going through the motions because laughing at bad jokes is better than being alone with nothing but the black hole in your brain -- especially Natasha, he thinks, who can't have much more affinity for these movies than he does. 

A phrase comes to mind that he heard somewhere: _Fake it 'til you make it._

So he sketches the curve of Natasha's shoulder and the graceful curl of her hand on Clint's ankle; the line of Sam's arm when reaching for the popcorn bowl; the way that Tony's fingers dance lightly over his high-tech little computer while he doesn't even pretend to watch the movie but mouths along with all the dialogue anyway. Sam passes the popcorn to Steve and he takes a handful and passes it along. 

Natasha leans back, resting the shoulder he was just sketching against his bigger one. "Can I see?" she asks, in bratty-sibling tones, and it steals Steve's breath for an instant, that sudden echo from the past. But she couldn't have known Bucky used to do the exact same thing.

"No," he says, half covering it up with his arm. It's just a page of doodles anyway; he doesn't care. It's all part of the show and he thinks she gets that. Natasha wrestles with him halfheartedly for a moment or two before giving up and continuing to use Steve as her own personal pillow in retaliation.

On the screen, someone says something Steve's not paying attention to and half the room laughs. The other half seems to be mostly asleep.

There are worse places to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Not that there's anything wrong with fic/headcanons in which Steve loves contemporary pop culture, or bonds with people over a shared love of Disney films or whatnot. But I was thinking about the difference between the kind of thing he grew up with, and the very different pacing and writing of movies and shows today (heck, I know plenty of people in my parents' generation who don't _get_ the sense of humor in most of what's popular and funny now, and Steve's frame of reference is a generation or two removed from that). It's got to be really disconcerting for him. And yet, there's more than one way of bonding over a thing.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://laylainalaska.tumblr.com) (fic announcements at [sholiofic](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com)) or at [DW](http://sholio.dreamwidth.org).


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